“About something that ain’t gonna happen until we’re grandfathers? Something that probably won’t happen at all?”
“But—”
“We got a good place here. The crazy old coot left it to us and we’d be fools to leave it.”
“What about Colorado?”
“We’ll get there next year. Or maybe the year after. And if we don’t like it there we can always come back here.”
For the first time in his life, Tim not only felt that Hawk was wrong, but he decided to do something about it.
“Okay,” he said. “You stay. I’m goin’ back.”
“You’re as crazy as he was!”
“I’ll come back here. I’m just goin’ to warn them and then I’ll come back.”
Hawk made a snorting noise. “If they leave any skin on your hide.”
For a week Tim patched up their boat and its ragged sail and filled it with provisions. The morning he was set to cast off, Hawk came to the pebbly beach with him.
“I guess this is good-bye for a while,” Tim said.
“Don’t be a dumbbell,” Hawk groused. “I’m goin’ with you.”
Tim felt a rush of joy. “You are?”
“You’d get yourself lost out there. Some sea monster would have you for lunch.”
“We can always come back here again,” Tim said, grunting, as they pushed the boat into the water.
“Yeah, sure.”
“We hafta warn them, Hawk. We just hafta.”
“Shut up and haul out the sail.”
For several days they sailed north and east, back along the way they had come. The weather was sultry, the sun blazing like molten iron out of a cloudless sky.
“Ice age,” Hawk grumbled. “Craziest thing I ever heard.”
“I saw pictures of it in the books the Prof had,” said Tim. “Big sheets of ice covering everything.”
Hawk just shook his head and spit over the side.
“It really happened, Hawk.”
“The weather don’t change,” Hawk snapped. “It’s the same every year. Hot in the summer, cool in the winter. You ever known anything else?”
“No,” Tim admitted.
“You ever seen ice, except in the Prof’s pictures?”
“No.”
“Or that stuff he called snow?”
“Never.”
“We oughtta turn this boat around and head back to the island.”
Tim almost agreed. But he saw that Hawk made no motion to change their course. He was talking one way but acting the other.
They fell silent. Tim understood Hawk’s resentment. Probably nobody would listen to them when they got home. The elders would be pretty mad about the two of them running off and they wouldn’t listen to a word the boys had to say.
For hours they skimmed along, the only sound the gusting of the hot southerly wind and the hiss of the boat cutting through the placid water.
“It’s all fairy tales,” Hawk grumbled, as much to himself as to Tim. “Stories they make up to scare the kids. What do they call ’em?”
“Myths,” said Tim.
“Myths, that’s right. Myths.” But suddenly he jerked to attention. “Hey, what’s that?”
Tim saw he was looking down into the water. He came over to Hawk’s side of the boat.
Something was glittering down below the surface. Something big.
Tim’s heart started racing. “A sea monster?”
